When President Clinton tapped Joe Lockhart in late
July to replace Mike McCurry as Press Secretary as of October
5, ABC's Peter Jennings didn't tell viewers how Lockhart used
to work for ABC News. In a story for CNN, Wolf Blitzer also
skip-ped Lockhart's time at the cable network.

As The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz noted in a September 9
profile, "he will be the first White House press secretary
since Ron Nessen in the Ford administration to have had a
recent career as a newsman. The son of journalists and the husband of a
longtime ABC producer, Lockhart was spinning through the
revolving door between media and politics long before that
phrase became fashionable." Indeed, he has bounc-ed back and
forth since his father, an executive with NBC News, landed him a
volunteer spot in Carter's 1980 reelection campaign.

As recounted by Kurtz, Lockhart "left to become an NBC foot
soldier, writing for the network's internal wire at the
Democratic National Convention." After the convention he got a
paying job with the campaign.

By 1984 he had "climbed aboard Walter Mondale's presidential
campaign. He was responsible for the care and feeding of the
network cameramen and technicians, riding with them on the 'zoo
plane' and helping them find backdrops for better shots."

Mondale's loss led Lockhart to a Press Secretary position
for Democratic Senator Paul Simon. But he soon crossed back as
an assignment editor for ABC News in Chicago, later taking the
same title in CNN's Washington bureau. Within a couple of
years, he signed aboard the 1988 Dukakis presidential effort as a
traveling press aide.

When his wife Laura Logan, Deputy Press Secretary for
John Glenn's 1984 presidential run, was transferred to London
by her employer, ABC News, Lockhart followed and landed a slot
with the nemesis of liberals: Rupert Murdoch. Kurtz recounted:
"He applied for a producer's job at British-based Sky News and
was stunned when executives there wanted him for on-air work....Soon
his daily business reports were running back home on Fox, albeit
at 5 a.m. Sky News dispatched him to Washington to report on
the Gulf War, but...his program was later canceled." Back in
the U.S. he worked for the Clinton campaign, then assumed the
Deputy Press Secretary slot at the White House.

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